| Babbitt | |
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1st edition cover |
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| Author(s) | Sinclair Lewis |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject(s) | American Values |
| Genre(s) | Satire |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace & Co. |
| Publication date | 1922 |
| Media type | Print (Hardcover) |
| Pages | 432 (paperback) |
| ISBN | NA |
| Preceded by | Main Street |
| Followed by | Arrowsmith |
Babbitt, first published in 1922, is a novel by Sinclair Lewis. Largely a satire of American culture, society, and behavior, it critiques the vacuity of middle-class American life and its pressure on individuals toward conformity.
As is indicated in many editions of the book, the working title of Babbitt was Pumphrey.
Contents |
The book takes its name from the principal character, George F. Babbitt, a middle-aged partner, with his father-in-law, in a real-estate firm. When the story begins, in April 1920, Babbitt is 46 years old. He has a wife, Myra; three children (Verona, 22; Ted, 17; and Tinka, 10); and a well-appointed house in the prosperous Floral Heights neighborhood of “Zenith,” a fictitious city in the equally fictitious state of “Winnemac,” which is adjacent to Ohio, Indiana, and Michigan. (Babbitt does not mention Winnemac by name, but Lewis's later novel Arrowsmith elaborates on its location.) When Babbitt was published, newspapers in Cincinnati, Duluth, Kansas City, Milwaukee, and Minneapolis each claimed that their city was the model for Sinclair's Zenith.[1] Cincinnati possessed perhaps the strongest argument for such a claim, because Lewis had lived there for a time while researching Babbitt.[2] Lewis's own correspondence suggests, however, that Zenith is meant to be any Midwestern city with a population between about 200,000 and 300,000.[3] Zenith's chief virtue is conformity, and its religion is “boosterism.” Prominent boosters in Zenith include Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer; Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's department-store; Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway Business College and “instructor in Public Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law;” and T. Cholmondeley "Chum" Frink, a famous poet of dubious talent.
Babbitt is professionally successful as a realtor. He lives with only the vaguest awareness of the lives and deaths of his contemporaries. Much of his energy in the beginning is spent on climbing the social ladder through booster functions, real estate sales, and making good with various dignitaries. Lewis paints humorous scenes of Babbitt foolishly bartering for liquor (illegal at the time because of Prohibition), hosting dinner parties, and taking clients to view property. All of this is juxtaposed against backdrops of Babbitt's incessant materialism and his growing discontent.
Gradually, Babbitt realizes his dissatisfaction with "The American Dream" and attempts to quell these feelings by going camping with his close friend and old college roommate Paul Reisling in Maine. It has no great effect. After Paul shoots his abrasive, emasculating wife Zilla during an argument, Paul is sent to prison, and Babbitt is devastated by the loss of his best friend and by his contemplations on how equally suffocating and changeless their lives are. In time, he rebels against it all: he jumps into liberal politics with famous socialist litigator Seneca Doane; conducts an extramarital affair with client Tanis Judique; goes on various vacations; and cavorts around Zenith with would-be Bohemians and flappers, friends of Tanis. But each effort ends up disillusioning him to the concept of rebellion, as when Babbitt vacations in Chicago and encounters Paul's alleged mistress. On his excursions with Tanis and "the Bunch," he learns that even they have just as rigid standards for their subculture. And when Virgil Gunch and others discover Babbitt's activities concerning Seneca Doane and Tanis Judique, Virgil tries to convince Babbitt to return to conformity. Babbitt refuses. His former friends then ostracize him, forming the "Good Citizens' League," which boycotts Babbitt's real estate ventures and shuns him publicly from clubs around town.
Babbitt slowly becomes aware that his forays into nonconformity are not only futile but also destructive of the life and the friends he once loved. Yet he continues with them — that is, until Myra suspects Babbitt's affair, though she has no proof or specific knowledge. Unrelated to these events, Myra falls seriously ill. Babbitt, in a near-epiphany, rushes home and relinquishes all rebellion in order to care for his wife, realizing that there is value in marriage even though it not be romanticized or passionate love. In short time, his old friends and colleagues welcome Babbitt back into the fold. The consequence of his disgruntled philosophical wanderings being met with practical events of life, he reverts into dispassionate conformity by the end; however, Babbitt never quite loses hold of the sentimentality, empathy, and hope for a meaningful life which he has developed. In the final scene, all has been righted in his life and he is back on a traditional track. He is awakened in the night to find that Ted and Eunice have not returned from a party. In the morning his wife informs him that the two have been discovered in the house, having been married that night. While an assemblage of friends and family gather to denounce this development, Babbitt excuses himself and Ted to be alone. He offers his approval of the marriage stating that though he does not agree he admires the fact that Ted has chosen to lead his life by his own lights and not that of conformity.
The novel is divided roughly into thirds. The first seven chapters follow Babbitt closely through a typical workday, from his restless dreaming before he awakens in the morning to his struggle to fall asleep that night. The middle third of the novel reveals Babbitt in various settings: on vacation, attending a business convention, campaigning for the conservative mayoral candidate, giving dinner parties, giving speeches, attempting (in vain) to climb socially, serving as a member of the Sunday School Advisory Committee of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, and so on. This section of the novel has drawn criticism about the thread of the plot becoming lost; critics have argued that Lewis seems to move aimlessly from one set-piece to another.[4] The final third of the novel reprises the pattern of Babbitt's midlife crisis: He rebels, is “punished,” and “repents (conforms),” but, toward the end of the story, the possibility of redemptive change is implied in the rebelliousness of Babbitt's son.
Though written well before the Great Depression, the New Deal, World War II, and the post-war economic boom, Lewis's comic novel has remained popular into the 21st century. Critics have posed reasons for the book's continuing accessibility to include Lewis's seeming success in identifying and portraying emotions, challenges, and concerns that remain relatively viable over time. By the 1920s, the United States was already concluding the process described by historian Olivier Zunz as “making America corporate.”[5]
Historically significant is the author's use, throughout, of the political word “liberal.” The book was written not long after the project of “new liberalism” began, and the term had not yet congealed in the United States as a definition of a specific brand of ideology belonging to centre left-wing politics. Babbitt’s warped interpretation of the word, and his (and other characters’) equally skewed practical application of it, are examples of one of the humorous literary devices in which Lewis uses satire to illustrate and simplify complex ideas.
Babbitt was filmed in 1924 as a silent film,[6] with Willard Louis as George Babbitt, and again in 1934 as a talkie,[7] with Guy Kibbee in the title role. Both films were Warner Bros. productions.
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